True Mother is the spiritual harbinger of a new artistic paradigm - Godism

In her keynote address at the Rally of Hope on November 22, 2020, True Mother announced her intention to establish an international artists association. She also shared her view that the artistic expressions of Europe and its classical tradition were the progeny of Christian culture and that this tradition could be a model for art in the hyojeong cultural experience. She alluded to how the European artistic culture was a glorious expression based on the expectation of the return of Christ and the dawning of Heavenly Parent’s ideal world. In her speech she said:

In the past, as the Christian cultural realm waited for the Messiah to come again, an ancient, beautiful culture was formed with the European continent at its center. It is still loved today by all peoples of the world. That culture is the culture of longing for the Messiah.

What I want to say now is that although, due to the Fall, people have been lacking in filial devotion to our Heavenly Parent, who has endured and waited six thousand years for us, I wish to see their beautiful arts — which express the love, joy and praise they return to their Parent — shining forevermore through the revolution of the culture of heart. The arts are also a swift path by which the world can become one.

Her comments in this regard echoed True Father’s ideas regarding Western classical music. In a meeting with musicians in Cartagena, Colombia, in 1983 at the Sixth World Media Conference Father instructed:

Classical music has the ability to convey the expressions of the heart in very profound ways. Classical music should be your foundation and you need to study the music of the European composers. With that foundation you can then take the Abel-type elements of other musical styles — Jazz, Folk, Pop — and combine them into one style that transcends those individual styles. That’s New Age music!

True Mother also mentioned in a meeting in May 2019 that she enjoys Italian classical music because of its connection to the Christian cultural heritage. In a subsequent meeting on May 12, 2020, she stated that music can be a way to unite East and West and that through culture we can create a common bond of heart.

Again, she referenced the glorious Christian culture in music. Her desire is for composers in the hyojeong sphere to create new songs that express the heart of Heavenly Parent in the process of creating a culture of peace. It is clear that she distinctly views the Western classical tradition as being an important source of inspiration in that endeavor.

As True Mother noted, a significant reason for taking this perspective is because the Europeans, in spite of their myriad problems, embraced Christianity and created their culture and societies based on Judeo- Christian beliefs. As the early church in Rome developed through the Middle Ages music with liturgical connotations became increasingly important in worship practices.

As musicologist Bruno Nettl observes, all religious spheres going back to antiquity utilized music in their rituals. We find in the Analects of Confucius, the ancient texts of the Sumerians and Hebrew teachings that music possessed a certain moral power and played an important role in shaping the dispositions of people in those cultures. Confucius would go so far as to say, “If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.” In the view of the thirteenth-century kabbalist Rabbi Jacob ha-Kohen, proponents of Jewish mysticism likened musicians to high priests, “who properly direct their fingers over the holes and strings of their instruments to awaken the Holy Spirit through prayer.” In the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church we find an emphasis on the stimulation of the physical senses through artistic beauty — music, stained- glass windows, incense and architecture. It was thought that by emphasizing aesthetic beauty one’s spiritual senses could be “awakened” and a higher consciousness could be attained.

It’s interesting to note that St. Augustine wasn’t initially favorable towards having music in the church due to its pagan associations. Augustine’s timorous distrust of music’s pleasurable attributes created a cognitive dissonance for him because of music’s sensual properties.

He would say, “For the senses are not content to take second place.” Yet because he intuited that music could be beneficial in the process of helping “weaker spirits develop a devotional frame of mind,” he eventually became inclined to approve of the custom of singing in the church. Rather than being ensnared by his anxiety with regard to the sensual properties of music, he reasoned that the benefits of music in the church outweighed the dangers, but vigilance and wisdom were always necessary.

True Mother also referenced Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation in her keynote speech. Luther was a composer of hymns and it was his contention that music was “a sermon in sound.” Johann Sebastian Bach, a devout Lutheran, believed music’s primary purpose was to praise and glorify God.

Beauty, whether in nature or art, can be sensual and enticing. The human desire for beauty is atavistic — a primal impulse. Emmanuel Kant posited that all people possess the innate desire to experience that which is aesthetically pleasing and stimulating. Though Kant couldn’t rationally explain why this was so, he nevertheless understood that the human yearning for beauty is real and universal because all people possess this desire. Beauty can be considered our Heavenly Parent’s expression of love to humankind and the feminine aspect of God’s divinity.

Music’s sonic etymology

Though all music is the result of physical phenomena (vibratory energy in motion), the development of the musical grammar and syntax in the Christian Church in Europe evolved in a way that embodied many of the tenets of the Principle of Creation as defined in the Divine Principle. The tenets of polarity, subject/object, give and take action, the triple object purpose, origin/division/union, the three stages of growth and numerology are fundamental to the Western classical musical tradition. As such, this particular music is ontologically in accord with the primary characteristics of our Heavenly Parent.

Accordingly, this music has spiritual essences that we perceive to be godly. In her book Unification Theology and Christian Thought, Dr. Young-oon Kim offers the following perspective regarding aesthetics and truth in art:

It is in the trans-moral dimension of aesthetic experience that beauty approaches God. All the laws from and within God — give and take, polarity, harmony — connect beauty from all cultures. And to the extent that they clearly amplify and substantiate God’s nature they evoke a response of love and appreciation from man. Since God represents absolute love and freedom, beauty is never confined.

Though it was Pythagoras who discovered and mathematically codified the sonic properties of pitch production found in nature, it was the religious composers in Europe — Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Austria — who developed the art of musical composition from its earliest incarnations of Gregorian chant and plainsong, to its most evolved utterances.

When J. S. Bach, the greatest exponent of Christian liturgical music, eventually pioneered the tuning system known as “equal temperament” in 1722, the final piece of the sonic landscape of Western music was in place. All Western music as we know it — Classical, Jazz, Gospel, Rock, Blues — would not exist without Bach’s systematic codification of pitch production and his ingenious tuning method.

It is my contention that because Christianity was the central religion in the providence of heaven, the revelations regarding musical composition, as well as science, medicine, astronomy and physics, were revealed to great extents in Christian Europe. I believe this is why True Parents have emphasized this cultural tradition as being especially meaningful.

The divine nexus of music and Mathematics

As the Western tonal syntax evolved from Gregorian chant in the ninth century and then through the Renaissance into the 1700s, the harmonious relationship between the physical and mathematical properties of sound production known as the overtone series (Pythagoras’ discovery), became the basis for the art of music. This “principled” syntactical organization of pitches and intervals became the foundation for musical composition in the West. Not so coincidentally, the tonal properties of the Western musical syntax are predicated on the laws that Dr. Kim alluded to in significant ways.

Polarity, give and take, subject and object, triple objective purpose and numerology are fundamental to Western music theory and practice. For example, Western diatonic music has two basic modalities (major and minor) and divides the octave into twelve equal parts (semitones). The seven-note scale (with the eighth note being the new beginning of a new octave), is the primary intervallic structure of its melodic properties.

There are seven “sharp” key centers and seven “flat” key centers and the basic chord structure of harmony is predicated on the triad; a three-note combination of pitches. The subject/ object relationship of what are called the tonic chord and dominant chord in a given modality is what determines an identifiable aural basis of a particular key center.

The technique of harmonic grammar in tonality known as “figured bass,” is founded on “four-part” writing and is predicated on the four vocal timbres of soprano, alto, tenor and bass. Moreover, as the symphony orchestra evolved as a prominent instrumental ensemble from the 1700s through the 1900s, we find three distinct groups of pitched instruments in the orchestral sound palette — woodwinds, brass and strings. Within each of these groupings there are four principal instruments that correspond to the aforementioned vocal timbres of soprano, alto, tenor and bass. In the woodwind group we find flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons. In the brass group we have trumpets, horns, trombones and tuba. In the string group we find violins, violas, cellos and basses.

Sonata form, a primary structural premise in the Western classical tradition, is a manifestation of the three stages of growth and origin-division- union action. In sonata form we find three structural pillars: the exposition (two musical themes are presented), the development (the two themes are expounded upon in various ways), and the recapitulation (the themes are rejoined in a harmonious union). Most of the symphonies and sonatas composed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Schubert, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky are predicated on sonata form.

The concept of polarity is of great significance in the Western classical musical tradition as well. Consider the following polar opposites that are prominent in Western music:

Consonant intervals/Dissonant intervals Major keys/Minor keys Tonic chords/Dominant chords Diatonicism/Chromaticism Adjacent pitches/Non-adjacent pitches Parallel motion/Contrary motion Loud/Soft Fast tempos/Slow tempos Long notes/Short notes High pitches/Low pitches Crescendo/Decrescendo Getting faster/Getting slower

There are many other such examples but suffice to say that there is ample evidence to support the idea that Western classical music theory and practice, from an ontological perspective, is strongly aligned with the precepts articulated in the Principle of Creation. Of course, a number of these characteristics are found in non-Western music. However, it is in the Western classical musical tradition that these characteristics - - most significantly the development of a sophisticated harmonic grammar that are aligned with the physics of pitch production — were used with great efficacy in the musical presentation of liturgical texts.

The German romantic poet Friedrich Schiller, who studied theology and was Beethoven’s collaborator, famously asserted, “Only through Beauty’s morning-gate dost thou penetrate the land of knowledge.” True Mother’s intuition regarding the beauty of the classical art of Europe is indicative of her affinity for appreciating beauty, as well as her understanding of how the arts can be transformational. Like True Father, she views beauty as the gateway through which humankind can be touched by, and eventually saved by the truth. In this respect she is the spiritual harbinger of a new artistic paradigm that represents hyojeong culture and expresses the ideals of Godism.